Ions inside a parabolic mirror - Surrounding absorbers with reflective geometry allows for efficient free space-coupling

Our research aims at the free-space interaction of a single ion with a surrounding light field. A particularly important ingredient is the illumination of the ion from almost the full solid angle. Conventional ion traps are not built with wide open optical access as their primary design goal and are thus restricting the solid angle accessible to incoming light. By combining a reflective optical element such as a parabolic mirror with a specially designed wide open ion trap we aim to overcome this limitation.